Graduate Enrolled Student Surveys

MIT periodically invites enrolled graduate students to participate in surveys that contained questions about: satisfaction with various academic and non-academic experiences, how students' skills have been enhanced while at MIT, workload, obstacles to academic progress, usage of and satisfaction with various resources, and perceptions of climate.

Respondents said they were quite satisfied overall being a graduate student at MIT (88% somewhat or very satisfied).

Slightly fewer students reported being satisfied with their life outside MIT (81% somewhat or very satisfied).

Fewer still reported being satisfied with their ability to integrate the needs of their academic work with the needs of their personal/family life (65% somewhat or very satisfied).

Graduate students were asked to rate the overall quality of their academic and student life experience at MIT. 78% of students rated their academic experience as very good or excellent, while 56% of students gave the same rating for their studentlife experience.

Skill Development: When asked how their graduate education at MIT enhanced various skills, master's students and doctoral students rated the items quite differently. Master's students tended to assign higher values (than doctoral students) to items related to working
with other people ("Working in a team," "Leading a team," "Negotiating with people in a position of authority," "Supervising others"). On the other hand, doctoral students stressed skills related to research and teaching ("Becoming an expert in my field,"
"Knowing the latest research techniques," "Writing papers for publication," "Teaching," etc.).

More than 60% of graduate students said that the reasonableness of their workload was about right. Only 5% said their workload was much too heavy.

Nearly half of graduate students reported having a spouse or partner. The vast majority of graduate students do not have children (91%).

More than half of graduate students reported living in off-campus housing (60%).